JANUARY. 
11 
and the church of St. Eustache. On my way thither I was shocked to 
see the way in which the Sabbath is desecrated. Tradesmen, and 
labourers with pickaxes and shovels, enormous carts with building 
materials, were moving in all directions, while numbers of women 
were washing their clothes at 12 o’clock on Sunday morning in a boat 
on the Seine. Every shop was open for business; in the afternoon 
many were closed, to enable the owners to go to some place of amuse¬ 
ment. N otre Dame is a magnificent pile of building; within it several 
distinct services were going on at one and the same time, while around 
its outer walls were the chapels of various saints, each of which had its 
devotees. One was decorated with Grapes and Vine branches, and a 
woman was there praying that the saint would grant her a good 
vintage. The colouring and gilding is so rich that it quite disturbs the 
solemn repose of the place, and mars that beautifully “ dim religious 
light ” which is so characteristic of fine Gothic buildings, and which, 
through the eye, appeals so forcibly to the heart of man. The busy 
tread of feet, and the continual hum of voices, tending, with the 
gorgeous decoration, to raise the impression that one had gone to 
“ Vanity Fair ” instead of a cathedral. The church of St. Eustache is 
(if possible) more highly embellished, and those of the Madeleine and 
St. Sulpice are also very beautiful. It is singular to notice how much 
the females outnumber the males in the churches. If there is a 
confession going on it is generally a woman ; in fact, in all devotional 
acts they seem to take the lead of the sterner sex. In the afternoon 
I went to see the Catalan, a flower garden in the Bois de Boulogne. 
On our route to this place we passed the Place de la Concorde, with 
its noble fountains, and along the Champs Elysees, under the grand 
triumphal arch, and into the very beautiful road which runs through 
the Bois de Boulogne (a finer specimen of a McAdamized road cannot 
be found). 
There is a fine lake of water in this wood, and the disposition of the 
trees is tolerably artistic, but from the circumstance of their being all 
of one size, and none of them sufficiently massive, the effect is very 
monotonous. The Catalan, or flower garden, is a kind of Cremorne 
with Marionette theatres, &c., and hither the population of Paris hies 
in all its finery on this day. Thousands of elegantly dressed people 
were walking about in the greatest order. 
Veronica speciosa is largely used here for filling up shady corners. 
A plant called Artemise, bearing a white flower, and common. 
Marigolds, with a dwarf blue Aster, were the principal plants here in 
the beds. In a pavilion near the entrance there were some Dahlias of 
great beauty, shown by M. Mizard. 
I walked also in the gardens of the Tuileries, and was struck with 
the neatness of the parterre in front of that palace. Here, too. Marigolds 
are the principal plants used for decoration. I noticed here very fine 
bushes of Persian Lilac—half standards—with large round heads 
covered with blossom buds, and found that these have the old wood 
regularly pruned out, and make an uniform growth of young, which 
ripens and sets its flower buds. They do the same also with the 
Althaea frutex, with the same result. But this is very mainly owing to 
